On a March afternoon on the Los Angeles River, two anglers waded in the concrete channel of the Glendale Narrows, casting their lines for carp and largemouth bass. Above them, a belted kingfisher perched on a mattress that had been caught in the crook of a budding cottonwood during a recent storm surge. Some recreationists enjoy catch-and-release on the river, but others — low-income and unhoused people who need sustenance — were hoping to leave with coolers, buckets or even shopping carts full of freshly caught fish.
It’s not very often that anyone compares a Brad Pitt movie to a worldwide pandemic, but that’s what’s happening in the world of fly-fishing. While other businesses try to dig themselves out from the damaging effects of the novel coronavirus and quarantine, many fly-fishing shops across the country are noticing a different trend: Business is booming.
“We’ve been doing this for 160 years, and the last time we saw a push this big was when Brad Pitt made ‘A River Runs Through It,’ ” says Simon Perkins, the newly appointed president of fly-fishing giant Orvis. The movie was based on the book of the same name by Norman Maclean.
your asking the wrong people. forest ranger patrick everyday does his part to clean the park . problem is the people are animals with no courtesy. not enough of authority up there its sad i know. but people need to take reposnisbility.
Pistoff Fly Fisherman says:
I was just there today. It looks as if there was an air drop of trash all along the west fork of the San Gabriel River. I’d love to say that it’s just an issue of blocked and/or overflowing dumpsters, but it’s clear there wasn’t even an attempt to get the trash to a receptacle in most cases. I could’ve filled a couple dumpsters just within the first mile of the footbridge – and that doesn’t include what was strewn all around the dumpsters. Between the litter and the tagging (in broad daylight!), I wish they’d stand watch and ticket the living piss out of these jerks. We could wipe out the state deficit with one June weekend.
Josh Mills, with the Wild Steelhead Coalition, stands along the Grande Ronde River in November, 2019. Last month, the coalition purchased eight acres with plans to donate that land to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. (Fay Mills / Courtesy)
A prime piece of steelhead “reel estate” along the Grande Ronde River will become public property, thanks to the fundraising efforts of a group of dedicated anglers.
In late January, the Wild Steelhead Coalition purchased the eight-acre parcel featuring 2,000 feet of riverfront access. The undeveloped land, known as Turkey Run, is also adjacent to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife land already used by anglers and boaters. The land is about a mile upstream from the mouth of the Grande Ronde.Read Eli Francovitch’s story in the Spokesman-Review.
“The unlikely series of events that brought the parcel into Appleton’s hands began with a 2017 Times article that detailed several hundred properties in the river channel that were owned by individuals and companies. For reasons unknown, those properties were bypassed — and mostly forgotten by their owners — when the Los Angeles County Flood Control District acquired title to most of the river.”
Trout Unlimited is currently pushing Congress to stop Asian carp before they reach the Great Lakes by constructing a barrier at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam in Joliet, Illinois.
Update: On March 1, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously that bigger L.A. restaurants cannot offer or provide disposable plastic straws to customers who are dining in or taking food to go unless customers request them, according to the Los Angeles Times. The law goes into effect on Earth Day, April 22.
The Berkeley, California, City Council just passed an ordinance to require restaurants charge an additional 25 cents for disposable cups by January, 2020, as part of a sweeping Single Use Disposable Foodware and Litter Reduction Ordinance. Opponents wonder if take-out coffee customers might wait to buy their to-go java in neighboring Oakland.
Meanwhile, Adidas’s CEO says the company sold 1 million shoes last year made from harvested ocean plastics. Making the shoes involved 3D printing technology, as well as a partnership with Parley for the Oceans.
And, note the graph here that shows the Top 20 countries with mismanaged plastic waste. No.1 is China; No. 20 is the United States.
Here’s a hopeful quote from Parley’s weekly blog:
“Removing plastics from the ocean is not enough. We need to get at the whole idea of disposability and single-use items,” says Tom Szaky, CEO of the Trenton, New Jersey-based international recycling company TerraCycle, which is behind Loop. “We’re going back to the milkman model of the 1950s. You buy the milk but the milk company owns the bottle, which you leave in the milk box to be picked up when you’re done with it.”
More than 1,000 fish died in Malibu Lagoon last week from what scientists suspect was higher-than-average water temperature. (Courtesy #follownews)
More than 1,000 fish, mostly mullets, were discovered last week floating dead in Malibu Lagoon, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Fish die-offs have been widely reported this summer in Florida and the Gulf Coast due to a persistent red algae bloom. Our own die-off in Malibu Lagoon occurred because of high-than-average water temperatures, at least that’s the suspicion of state park scientists.
Scientists also blame hotter-than-average ocean temperatures for the Southland’s muggy conditions this summer. Temperatures have been recorded around 80 degrees F.
A coyote stands on its hind legs, captured by a new wildlife camera installed by the National Park Service near Silver Lake. | National Park Service/Public Domain
According to KCET, National Park Service researchers have installed a series wildlife cameras across 30 miles of the river’s course to try and get answers on how foxes, bobcats, opossums, coyotes, skunks, raccoons and other mammals use the area.
Around 30 cameras have been installed this year, from relatively wild areas in Griffith Park to little strips of property right outside of downtown L.A. that could be as small as 10×20 feet. The program will hopefully help determine whether the LA River acts as a wildlife corridor between the more than 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and spaces in the city.
In a gem of a piece, photographer Roberto (Bear) Guerra chronicles the species loss the LA River has suffered since being encased in concrete with photographs of specimens from the Western Foundation for Vertebrate Zoology and the LA County Natural History Museum.
An important photo essay as our city weighs the future of the river in terms of development and habitat restoration. A sample:
Western Toad (Bufo boreas) — Perhaps no animal is as emblematic of the decline of native species in the decades following channelization as the western toad. One of the neighborhoods adjacent to the soft-bottom Glendale Narrows section of the river is still known as “Frogtown,” for the swarms of young toads and Pacific treefrogs that hopped through the streets each year until the 1970s. Today, toads and frogs are rarely to be found.
moek says:
lariverflyfishing 